An ecologist on a mission

I was born early in the Anthropocene, the newly-proposed geological era that will be marked on Earth for all future time by a layer of rock rich in plastics, chicken bones and radionuclides, and the simultaneous extinction of millions of species and lineages from the fossil record. As an ecologist and writer, my job is to raise awareness of the subtle but potent and dangerous changes that are underway in our relations with the living world and with each other, and to make available the best possible information on how to make them less severe. In practice, this means I focus on moderating the damage being done to ecosystems, the ecological services they provide, and the wildlife populations they contain, at all scales from the very local to the landscape, the continental, and the global level. But mostly I work at the landscape scale of up to a few thousand square kilometres, and mostly in the equatorial tropics – in the hills and mountains and along the coasts. I have earned a living (so far) by advising charities, companies and especially aid agencies on what they can do to keep human development going while preserving the necessary fabric of our amazingly beautiful and intricate biosphere. A summary of my professional work is available here, and since 2009 most of it has been done though my own company Creatura Ltd, which is described here.